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My story with Skyrim Legendary Edition (basically startup problems)


SooSzi

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TL;DR on the bottom.

 

So, I've been trying to run my Skyrim Legendary Edition for the past week or so. Day by day, night by night all I did whenever I had an occassion to touch the PC was to try and run Skyrim.

 

I started off as a total newb in modding and generally the technical stuff. It was years ago that I first tried my first mods for Skyrim. It was great, it was fun, everything was broken and everything kept crashing but it was mine. I did it and I was the one having fun. Then, life has taken Skyrim away from me for said years and only lately have I come back.

 

I got myself a Skyrim LE copy with all the shiny stuff and all. It was running just fine for the first 20 minutes. Then I decided to change the course of history (of Skyrim) and get some mods. The intro is boring and takes too long, the "Helgen sequence" is more fun if you mod 5 dragons into Solitude and simply rename it to "Solitude sequence" etc etc. Anyway, I closed the game and downloaded all the mod stuff I would need.

 

Got myself TES5EDIT, got myself NMM, got myself LOOT and then I embarked on an adventure to find the dankest mods in all nexusmods.com.

 

Over the minutes, hours, days I was getting better and better in modding, I started understanding things that people do not normally care to understand, I started paying attention to my load order, started doing cool things with TES5EDIT and generally got gud. Then, something unexpected and horrifying struck me down...

 

 

I experienced my first ever STARTUP CTD.

 

PANIC. Panic arised inside my head and for a second I was paralysed. "Think" - I said to myself - "Think, you're prepared for this. You've been training! You CAN do it!" and started mingling with the load order as I knew it was most likely the problem.

 

I ticked off all the variations of the compatibility patches for mods I do not have or downloaded these mods to add difficulty and epicness. I deleted a few mods said to cause plenty of startup crashes and other stability issues. I started deactivating my mods one by one starting from the least master-like mods to end with the ones most important.

 

I was reaching the top of my load order. My fingers started trembling with fear as I knew... In a few disabled mods I will get to the horrifying part of troubleshooting... the skyrim.esm.

 

But I did not take my hands off my keyboard. Oh no. I turned on TES5EDIT and checked the masters for errors and missing records/files/other masters. My only ally in this war came up with no results... Not a single red-tinted message, not a single warning to help me with my struggles. Panic struck again. It had to be done... I reinstalled the game.

 

Reinstalled SKSE, started slowly adding the essential mods and stopped at a count of maybe 5 or 7 of them. Tried running Skyrim again and then another dose of terror pierced my heart. It couldn't be... More startup CTDs? On a clean reinstall?!

 

It was madness.

 

And so it started again. I started disabling and uninstalling the mods. Checking each plugin for errors and verifying every cache there was. I even cleaned my WHOLE load order with T5E. It was all for nothing. It didn't matter if I tried running the game as administrator. It didn't matter if it was via SKSE or the launcher. Nothing mattered anymore. My life goal has become to run the game, that I remember running just fine so many times.

 

Visions of dragon slaughter and CBBE orgies still haunt my dreams... The will to fight in the endless warzone conflicts keeps arising every day. But now I know what to do. It will work now. I'm reinstalling the game again. This time it's all clean. Everything I could think of.

 

If I fail, I swear to the holy nine that Bethesda will perish for what they did to me...

 

 

 

TL;DR

Startup CTD crashes. It's not a loadorder thing, can't be. It must be a problem with skyrim.esm or one of the DLCs in my copy of the game. It literally won't let the game show the main menu. What I tried:

 

- changing default audio settings both to CD quality and to Studio quality;

- disabling every mod there was;

- doing a few clean reinstalls;

- verifying;

- using TES5EDIT to find missing masters;

- running the game as admin via both launcher and SKSE;

- running it without DLCs activated in load order.

 

So far no results. I just finished the next reinstall. Trying something again and I'll get back with results.

 

PS: Post made mainly to help those with similar problems. If I ever find a fix that is.

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Hi!

I'm not god in modding, but may I can help you.

 

A question: the VANILLA game at least (without mods) works?

 

Question 2: did you try see videos from Ghoper about Crash on Startup Fix?

Edited by Uncina
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1. No SKSE etc, game ran via launcher - works fine.

2. Game ran via SKSE loader - works fine.

3. Connected NMM with Skyrim, game ran via SKSE loader from NMM menu - works fine.

4. Installing USLEEP, running via NMM - works fine.

5. Adding mods starting with SKYUI, HDT and some other s#*! - CTD.

6. Deleting mods one by one till the CTD drops.

7. Actually I just installed campfire for frostfall because I obviously forgot - works fine.

8. Adding more mods, still only the master ones - works fine.

9. I'm going out for a smoke. It's been a long time since I got this far. Something must be broken because the game still works.

10. Adding more mods, leftover masters and some low-tier esp - works fine. (WTF)

11. Adding more masters and non-masters - works fine. (ok what's going on, seriously)

12. Adding hearthfires extended, possibly the source of the infestation - works fine. (is it a prank?)

13. Adding sexy azura statue and really cute lydia and some other eye candy - works fine. (this is getting out of hand)

14. Adding safety load, this might be the thing - CTD. GOTCHA!

15. Good bye safety load - still CTD. Please no.

16. Reinstalling safety load and adding a master I forgot - works fine. Santa is real.

17. Installing overhauls and graphics mods - works fine.

18. Installing stuff like skeletons, models, animations etc - works fine.

19. Installing the rest of the mods - works fine. (what the f*ck man)

 

After a long, epic battle a clean reinstall fixed everything. FFS, I have no idea why it worked now when I decided to share my issue with others.

 

One way or another, a message to all those that have or had or have had CTDs, tried everything and never got it to work:

 

FULLY CLEAN REINSTALL

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